Chapter 771 - The Only Choice

“What do you do best?” asked the voice in Zeke’s head.

He knew it came from the Abyss, the being that constituted all reality outside of the cage of the Framework.  However, it was oddly disconnected, resonating through his mind like an echo in a cave. 

“I don’t know,” he answered aloud.

“You do.”

Zeke breathed deep, and the Framework shuddered with his breath.  Somehow, destroying the being that referred to itself as the Creator had forced him to take that petty entity’s place.  Immediately, the threads of the Framework had latched onto him, integrating themselves with his body.  In doing so, Zeke was empowered.  But he was also limited.

“You must destroy it,” the Abyss stated evenly.  “You must destroy it all.”

Zeke looked around, though he didn’t move.  Rather, he cast his awareness through what was now his form.  It encompassed everything he’d once considered all of reality.  The countless universes, all layered one atop the other.  The planets within them, varied as they were.  The animals.  Monsters.  The spirits and elementals.  And finally, the people. 

So, so many people.

Zeke had no idea how many there were really were.  He felt trillions without even trying, and he knew if he concentrated, he would find exponentially more.  It was like the difference in knowing he had hundreds of thousands of hairs on his head and counting them, one by one until he had an accurate tally.  Theoretically, the latter was possible, but it was entirely unnecessary.

So it was with the number of people connected to him.

And he could feel them all.  Their hopes. Their dreams.  He could hear their prayers and smell their stink like it was his own.  They were him, and he was them.  Above it all stood a single emotion that connected each person to those closest to them. 

Love, and to varying degrees. 

There was love of their families, steady and pure.  Love for their partners, hot and passionate.  Love for their neighbors, faraway but no less powerful for it.  Love for their countries, their worlds, their very species. 

Counter that was hate, which felt much the same.  The worst of it was reserved for those who’d betrayed them.  Potent and seething, it cut through everything else.  But there were other brands of hate as well, the strength of which ranging from boiling to lukewarm and everything in between.

There were other emotions there as well, but those were the most prominent. 

It didn’t take Zeke long to find Talia, who was filled with so much love that it nearly blinded him.  Mostly, for her people, but also for him.  For Pudge, too, who she regarded as a brother as well. 

But there were hundreds of millions of kobolds who loved him as well.  At the center of it all was Eveline, whose presence felt almost ephemeral.  Her love was the most solid thing about her, and that flowed into everyone in the tower. 

Hate was almost as strong.  There were just as many people out there who loathed his very existence.  Who wanted him gone.  Who’d suffered at his hand and clung to the notion that he should pay for his sins.

That cut right through him, forcing him to feel the weight of his choices even more keenly than ever before. 

And there were just as many people – more, perhaps – out there who’d never even heard of him.  They had no feelings concerning his existence, and for whatever reason, the silence he heard from them was even more impactful than the hatred.

“What do you mean?” he asked aloud.

His voice sent the entire Framework and everything within it to trembling.  Most of the people only felt it as a mild and formless discomfort, but some were overwhelmed and collapsed. 

“Control yourself,” the voice soothed.  “Be mindful of your effect on those connected to you.  Otherwise, you will kill them.”

Zeke focused and asked, “Is this better?”

That sent only a mild shudder through the threads, and the voice of the Abyss responded, “It is.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, overwhelmed by everything.  He’d just killed the Creator and taken his place.  It didn’t matter that he’d never set out to do so.  It had happened, and now the entirety of his reality depended on him to make it work.  “How do I save them?”

“You have two choices.”

“What are they?”

“First, you could keep following the road set forth by your predecessor,” the Abyss said.  “You may succeed where…he…failed.  I will warn you that it is not in my nature to allow this isolated pocket of existence to continue.  I will, by my very nature, consume you all.  Perhaps not soon, but eventually.  Your predecessor understood that.  He feared it more than anything.  And in the end, it forced him to take chances he otherwise would not have taken.”

“The second?”

“Surrender.”

“The Creator gave me a similar choice.  I didn’t surrender,” Zeke responded.

“He was no Creator.  At best, he was a steward.  At worst, a thief and a tyrant.  An absentee ruler who was more concerned with perpetuating his own abominable existence than doing what was best for those beings who depended on him.”

“Help me to understand.  Who was he?”

Zeke had already heard the Creator’s side.  Now that he had a chance to learn the other, he didn’t think he could pass it up. 

“An outgrowth of selfishness that should have been destroyed in its infancy.  He was an aberration.  A parasite who fed off of me while pretending he was self-sufficient.  A delusional tumor who built his own reality because he could not fathom his own insignificance.”

“And you’re better?”

“I am everything.  Even your little pocket of reality is part of me.  The same is true of all universes.  All realities.  Everything and nothing.  If God exists, I am he.”

“But…where did you come from?”

“Nowhere. I exist outside the concept of time.  There is no before, only after.  I am the uncaused.  The necessary being that gives context to the very notion of existence.  The so-called Creator of your reality was the merest sliver of me, corrupted by the selfishness inherent in believing he was his own entity.”

Even with everything he’d seen, everything he had experienced, Zeke had difficulty contextualizing the concept of a being that existed outside of time, of an entity that had no origin.  But even as the Abyss – or God – spoke, Zeke knew its words to be true. 

“This choice, it can be summarized by two actions,” God continued.  “Create or destroy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You can rebuild the Framework.  In doing so, it will be stronger than before.  Or you can destroy it and reintegrate with my being.”

“How will it affect the people in this reality?”

“Rebuilding the Framework will likely result in someone challenging you.  You may defeat them, as the Creator defeated countless others before you came along,” God answered.  “But eventually, you will succumb.  You will be destroyed, and someone will take your place.  When that happens, I will give them the same choice.”

“Why not just take over?”

“If you do nothing, I will.”

“So there is a third choice?”

“Not if you want to preserve their lives,” God stated.  “They mean nothing to me, but I can feel that they are important to you.  Am I mistaken?”

“Is that even possible?  You making a mistake?”

“Not anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the Creator’s fall opened my eyes,” God said.  “He isolated himself, and in doing so, showed me the error of my ways.”

“How so?”

“I gave the parts of me – my servants – free will.  I let them choose whether to serve.  For time immemorial, they did so willingly.  Until the Creator broke free.  By allowing him free will, I gave him the opportunity to push me aside.”

“You could have crushed him any time you wanted,” Zeke pointed out.  The power he sensed was beyond the scale of anything he could understand.  Even with the Creator’s might running through him, Zeke knew he couldn’t last a fraction of a second against God’s will.

“I could have.  But in doing so, I would have destroyed too much of what he created,” God said.  “I will not do that unless there is no other choice.”

“You want to preserve this reality? Why?”

“It is what I do.  I am not a destroyer, Ezekiel.  You are.”

“What will happen to these people if I surrender?” Zeke asked.

“Nothing.  They will continue to live their lives, though they will do so as part of me.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad.”

“Not for them.”

“I’m guessing that doesn’t extend to me.”

“It does not.  In absorbing the Creator’s power, you took on his fate.  His sin.  Once this reality is reabsorbed into the collective that is my body, you will cease to exist.”

“And if I don’t like that?”

“Fight it,” God said sadly. “Repair the Framework and maintain this realm as long as you can.  I will neither try to stop you or halt my advance.  But know this – you will cease to exist.  Perhaps not now, but someday.  That is the fate of those who favor isolation.  You will die alone, defeated by someone who thinks they know better than you.  This time, you were the challenger, but one day, you will be the challenged.  And you will lose.”

“You said that before.”

“I did.”

It was the same choice he’d faced after his initial conversation with the Creator, which was probably predictable, considering his origin.  But this time was different in that there was no scenario where he could overpower God.  Whatever power he had accumulated didn’t even qualify as a drop compared to what he felt from the entity that encompassed all of existence. 

There was no resistance.  No way to win.  Just a choice between losses. 

Zeke sighed and let his shoulders sag.  There was only one viable choice, and he’d known it from the very beginning.  “What do I need to do to reintegrate?” he asked.  “You said I needed to embody the destroyer I have always been, right?”

“Let me show you.”

A second later, Zeke went stiff.  His ever muscle contracted as a cascade of information descended upon him.  In some ways, it felt like receiving a skill from the Framework, but millions of times more potent.  It also told him just how little he knew about manipulating the threads.  Or the anti-threads, which were really just God’s latent will. 

The influx of information only took a few moments, but when it ended, Zeke took days – perhaps weeks – to recover his wits. 

“After all the effort I put in, you just zap me with all that information.”

“It would not have been possible had you not already laid the foundation for the knowledge.  If I had done that to an ordinary person, they would have ceased to exist as an individual and rejoined my body.”

“Good to know,” Zeke muttered. 

Then, he examined the information he’d been given, and he immediately saw something he hadn’t expected.  “This is going to take a long time,” he said. 

Indeed, the idea was to pick apart the Framework, one thread at a time.  In doing so, the people inside would slowly become acclimated to the new paradigm.  If he went too quickly, they would be overwhelmed, and everything inside the Framework would be destroyed. 

“Enough time for you to live a normal life,” God said.  “Perhaps with those you love most.”

Normal, in this context, was subjective, and Zeke knew it would take thousands of years for him to complete the project.  Or long enough for him to live out his life with Talia and Pudge.  And Eveline.

“You will grow weaker with every passing day.  Everyone will,” God stated.  “Eventually, you will reach a baseline.”

“No more skills or magic or attributes.”

“Indeed.”

“No more lifespans in the thousands of years, either.”

“People were not meant to live that long.”

Zeke frowned.  Losing all that power would change everything.  But then again, people would still be people.  They would love one another.  Hate one another.  They would fight and steal and find ways to coexist. 

But then again, they wouldn’t be pushed toward conflict, as the Framework seemed to facilitate.  Would it be more peaceful?  Zeke doubted it.  But despots and tyrants would live and die just like everyone else, limiting their affect on the world. 

“You have the means to do what you need to do,” God said.  “I leave it to you to make the choice.  Like your predecessor, you are doomed to free will.  I will not interfere, save to tell  you that I am inevitable.  I will arrive.  What you do before then is what will define reality for those beneath you.”

And then, the presence disappeared.  The rift in the Framework mended in God’s absence, leaving Zeke to hover over a ruined city that had once been the hub that connected a thousand universes. 

It was in that instant that he realized that he didn’t need to remain there to do what needed to be done.  With his newfound power, he plucked a couple of strings and was suddenly transported to the one place he truly wanted to be.

It took Talia a second to realize he was there.

When she did, her eyes widened.  She didn’t say anything, and instead, simply rushed him.  A moment later, her arms were around him in a tight embrace.  Like that, they remained for long minutes until, at last, she pulled away.  Her cheeks glistened with tears. 

“What happened? Why are you here?  I thought…I thought you were leaving.”

Leaving.  That was how he’d put it.  In reality, when he’d departed, he’d fully intended to give himself over to the Creator.  And now, he had a similar choice ahead of him.  Though this time, he could make it without sacrificing his life with Talia. 

And that made all the difference.

With a deep breath that threatened to shake the room, Zeke explained everything – at least as much as he could.  There were some aspects that Talia could never understand, but she comprehended his intentions well enough to agree with his decision. 

“When will you do it?” she asked.

Zeke blinked.  Then, he let out a long, slow breath before saying, “There’s no time like the present.”

Without further hesitation, he reached out and severed a single thread.  Thus began the dismantling of the Framework.  Or more importantly, the rest of his life with the woman he loved. 

Not as a god.  Nor as a destroyer.  He was just a man who’d been given too much power and, as a result, was forced to make a choice.  He could only hope that he’d chosen wisely.  In Talia’s arms, it felt like he couldn’t have made any other.

This is the last chapter of Death: Genesis 12 and the end of the series. To all of you who've been following this story from the beginning, thank you for your support. I hope this ending provided closure on Zeke's journey.